Pages

Tuesday, 26 March 2013

The Book Inside - Andrew Strong

I’ve just finished a book that’s taken me six years to
complete. The idea was a simple one,
but it grew out of control. It got
messy and took over my life. I spent
six years trying to find its shape. Six
years looking for characters, their voices, their motives. I did other things too. My children went through high school. I got progressively worse at my day job. I shall not talk about that here.

I loved my book so much I didn’t want to finish it. It was
always going so well. People would ask
me when it was coming out and I’d say, well, I don’t know, we’ll see, the
market is tough at the moment. But a
couple of months ago, or thereabouts, I realised it was reaching its end. I always knew what was going to happen in
the final chapters, so it was quite exciting to actually get there. Not so exciting to realise it was almost
120,000 words long. There are examples
of longer works for younger people. Who
was counting?

I read it through.
It seemed magnificent. It also
seemed long. Ah well.

I sent it to my agent.
She liked it, was very encouraging, but asked me to cut it down. I got
out the scalpel. I redrafted. I sent it back. She asked me to cut more. I was
happy to do so. I took out the carving knife. I went through it again and
again. I sent it back. She asked me to cut more. I took out the chainsaw.

(Health and Safety advice: always use protective clothing
when using a chainsaw. They are dangerous.
Especially inside the house. Don’t use a chainsaw close to furniture. Or
pets. Or people.)

The book, along with my kitchen table, and a chest of
drawers, was cut it in half. All those
years of espresso fuelled mania cut away.
All those deliriously beautifully crafted chapters gone.

Most of them in which next to nothing happens.

I loved the book so much I had taken every plotline too far,
every digression along a meandering path to nowhere. It was like a maze of very decorative topiary. Plenty to look at
along the way, but you haven’t a clue where you’re going.

But by cutting and cutting and cutting I found my way
through the maze. I found the book that
was in there. The book inside.

I should have been able to find it in the first draft, but I
couldn’t. I was far too immersed in it. I was lost in the dream of my own book. It
became a parallel reality. The ejected
chapter that takes place on a Normandy beach - was that real? Didn’t it actually
happen? I wasn’t just cutting away
words; I was cutting memories.

It’s like discarding the keepsakes of an infant's years: locks of hair, milk teeth,
silly drawings, the ‘I LOV U DADDY’ post it notes. They mean a lot to me, but I don’t think the rest of the world
would be interested.

But without them my book wouldn’t have grown, wouldn’t have enjoyed the normal, stable upbringing it needed.

Even now I know it might not get published. I’ve sent it out into the world, my darling
little book, so trim and tailored. I hope it doesn’t come back in a few weeks
asking for a room.